ASIRT’s review of the incident finds Edmonton Police didn’t do anything that contributed to the man’s death. He killed himself during the standoff with police, after he shot at them.

On the other side of investigations, ASIRT found Edmonton Police officers and one RCMP officer used “grossly excessive force” in taking down a suspect after a chase. It’s unusual for ASIRT to actually recommend criminal charges when it investigates police officer conduct, but the Alberta Crown Prosecution Service will not be taking up the recommendation here.

This one didn’t come with a news conference but was dug up by the CBC’s Janice Johnston. The CBC story about this includes video from Edmonton’s police helicopter, which makes it fairly clear what happened once officers arrested the young man they had been pursuing. He wasn’t resisting arrest.

The violence of his arrest, noted as a violation of his Charter rights, was a mitigating factor in his eventual sentencing, reducing the time he could have received as punishment. There are various professional standards hearings that will take place for officers involved, now that ASIRT has concluded its investigation.

Conferences like this are a lot of work. And I don’t know how the City will pull it off with all the extra work of trying to keep delegates away from just about all our streets for a whole week.

I’m joking of course, as I’m sure some of the attendees will indeed find our trouble spots and call them out to Edmonton delegates. And some folks here are clearly not embarrassed (enough) by our failures to care so much as to re-direct the delgate’s attention.

These next stories all seem pretty straightforward, and just about all fit the usual “bothsideism” approach to journalism that is so comforting to those of us with privilege in one area or another, or many areas. Thinking about these stories in broader societal ways, however, I think we can see there’s a lot more going on than the headline tells us, and thinking beyond the surface details informs how and why a story is presented a certain way and how we and people we know may respond.

There’s the football team’s name. Very much presented in a “they said/they said” way this one comes across like “some people” think the name is racist. Well, Inuit and Indigenous peoples in Edmonton, and across the country, continually tell the team and its management just that, and the longer the team waits to change the name, the less likely it does so with any goodwill left. Considering how prevalent systemic racism is and our responsibilities after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the story is about more than some people complaining.

In the end, the case saw the charges result in a verdict of not-guilty, though nobody is disputing something happened at the waterpark, which itself is quite a change for our court system. As we should be more accustomed to seeing in the wake of #metoo, criminal charges or convictions are not the only way to prove something happened or to believe women in cases of sexual violence.

We haven’t talked about property development and zoning for a couple of weeks, so let’s take a look at what’s going on in those spaces.

The City’s got some new guidelines for infill development, which should include how to balance the costs for the first developer going into mature neighbourhoods where infrastructure needs upgrades. It’s much easier for a developer to cover these costs in a new, suburban, neighbourhood when they’re going to be selling plenty of homes. It just doesn’t work when someone wants to build a couple of new homes in an older community.

There’s a project in Holyrood that doesn’t seem to be winning many people over. Will city council approve it anyway? This is one to watch this week. (Just passed unanimously at city council as I post this item!)